Half A Dozen Out Half A Team In?

West Ham United have officially confirmed the departures of Andy Carroll, Adrian San Miguel and Samir Nasri, they join midfielders Moses Makasi and Noha Sylvestre and defenders Vashon Neufville and Josh Pask who will also depart, as will scholars Mason Barrett, Kevin Dalipi, Jay Mingi and Odysseas Spyridis.

Many fans will breathe a sigh of relief that the club have not exercised their option to extend Andy Carroll's contract, perhaps he will go on to greater things and suddenly become fit as a butcher's dog firing goals in from all over the Park, then again he could continue as he left off, albeit on vastly reduced money, by getting injured either during pre-season or just before the season starts.

With Carroll it was always what might have been, whereas with Adrian the case is slightly different, what he lacked in ability he made up with passion and many, many fans will be sorry to see him go. Adrian deserves first team football, but realistically was never going to play instead of Lukas Fabianski who made the position his own with his Hammer of the year performances.

Nasri was an interesting experiment, he probably would have been retained as the club had the option, but the shadows of Andy Carroll's and more recently Jack Wilshere's persistent injury struggles put paid to that. It seems that the club have finally realised that all that glisters is not gold! Great things were expected from Moses Makasi, Vashon Neufville and Josh Pask as well as Noha Sylvestre and scholars Mason Barrett, Kevin Dalipi, Jay Mingi and Odysseas Spyridis. Unfortunately they didn't make the grade, this can be viewed in two ways, either the quality of the youth programme is really poor, or that levels of expectation have gone through the roof since the arrival of Manuel Pellegrini and head of recruitment Mario Hussilos.

Having 'cut loose' half a dozen players it will be interesting to see who they are replaced by, they surely would not have been released had better options not existed. - Ed